Dr T and the Women

Sunday 3 September 2000 19.00 EDT
First published on Sunday 3 September 2000 19.00 EDT

A comedy about gynaecology would seem a slightly queasy project for Robert Altman, the maker of MASH, Nashville and Short Cuts, and there were some who thought Dr T and the Women - in which Richard Gere plays an over-busy Dallas doctor generally adored by his women patients - has its mysogynist moments.

The women are a great trouble to the poor fellow, who is saddled with a dotty wife (Farrah Fawcett), a chief nurse who's in love with him (Shelley Long), and an about-to-be-married daughter (Kate Hudson) who seems to prefer the female sex. Added to all that, he goes and falls for his new golf pro (Helen Hunt).

Juggling the women in his professional and personal life almost gives him a nervous breakdown. Only the fact that he genuinely prefers women to men - regarding them as angels frequently hooked on disastrously flawed men - keeps him inspecting the results of their various sexual liaisons.

According to Liv Tyler, who plays Gere's daughter, stricken with a yeast infection, it was funny and uncomfortable to have Richard Gere looking between your legs all day. I think, adds Gere, it's something to do with Bob's demented curiosity. Altman simply describes the film as his tribute to Texas women, who all seem impossibly well-groomed, well-proportioned and well-off.

Dr T and the Women is fast-paced and acted so relentlessly that you are never quite certain how much is improvised and how much carefully constructed in the free-wheeling Altman manner. But you do wonder, at the end of it all - with the doctor delivering a child to a Mexican family out in the desert - exactly what it's about. This lack of substance mars an otherwise entertaining movie. It was Gere's 51st birthday the day he arrived at the festival, and the paparazzi sang him Happy Birthday. He deserved some sort of a compliment, since he performs in the film with the sangfroid of a master. All that poking around must cause a certain amount of embarassment. It's not so surprising he seems to prefer putting.